


Bathtime Complaints

by Takaska



Category: The Arcana (Visual Novel)
Genre: Bath Time, Gen, and blushes a lot, it's mostly Valerius complaining about the other Courtiers while my boy Wolfgang listens, no descriptions of anything nsfw (just a vague hint once or twice), pretty self-indulgent tbh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-30
Updated: 2018-05-30
Packaged: 2019-05-15 23:08:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,739
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14799725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Takaska/pseuds/Takaska
Summary: Valerius gets food dumped on him, so he goes to clean up and airs out some grievances against his fellow courtiers to a new guard while he does so.





	Bathtime Complaints

Why did everyone around him have to be so _logic-defyingly_ incompetent?

Vulgora constantly instigated fights or reminisced about the bloodiest days of war.

Vlastomil prattled endlessly about his parade of worms.

Volta spoke rarely, though watching her eat churned the wine in his stomach.

Consul Valerius’ list of complaints carried on and on in his mind for each of the courtiers as servants scurried place to place trying- and usually failing- to be of use without screwing it all up. The final straw was when Volta lunged for a new plate of food brought forth, and the servant spooked and spilled it all over Valerius’ head and lap.

Now, Valerius was seething as he walked to one of the nicer baths in the castle, escorted by a new- and likely also incompetent- castle guard.

This guard was young, early 20s at most, and Valerius couldn’t recall seeing him before. Though he didn’t care for the staff, he remembered the faces of those who slighted him, or ruined something, and almost every single person in the castle had done both at one point or another. This one was just a future disaster in waiting, he was sure of it.

For now, however, he was going to use this young man as a makeshift free therapist.

“Enter with me,” he ordered as he stepped past the guard.

“Consul? Are you sure?” the guard asked.

“Don’t question me, just get in here and close the damned door!” Valerius snapped, freeing his hair from it’s braid.

Raising his eyebrows, but staying silent, the guard closed the door behind him and stood in front of it, trying not to watch the Consul undress himself.

“Name?” he asked, turning away from the guard and throwing his sash over a changing screen.

“Uh, Wolfgang,” he answered, confused.

“Wolfgang… Unusual name. I hope you know how to listen,”

Valerius walked out of view, behind the changing screen, and quickly shed his clothing and placed it along his sash.

“Place those on the chair outside. One of the servants will clean it and bring me my new clothes- if there’s someone competent enough to do so,” he snorted.

Wolfgang obeyed, and when he closed the door again and turned around, Valerius was in the bath, leaning back and trying to remove the gravy from his hair.

“I work myself to the bone for this city,” he started, “Every day, trying to maintain order, and I have done so for years, and yet I get no thanks. I get no rest. No, no I don’t,  _ instead _ I get  _ this!  _ All of my attempts at running this city, keeping it afloat, and my reward? Gravy staining everything I own and getting in my wine!”

He sat up straight again and looked at Wolfgang, eyes narrowing.

“Take that damned helmet off. If I’m going to be speaking to you I want to see your face clearly. Especially if you screw up later so I can remember it,”

“Of course, Consul,” Wolfgang said, quickly doing as he was told.

This gave Valerius the chance to examine his features more clearly. Light, olive skin, long brown hair tied back in a ponytail, bright green eyes, a scar over his nose. A handsome young man in all, and at least one who seemed to listen.

“Better. You’re new here, yes?” Valerius asked, reaching for shampoo.

“Yes sir. This is my fifth day,” he confirmed.

“New blood. Figures. Try not to screw up like everyone else.”

“I’ll… try my hardest, sir.”

Valerius snorted, working the shampoo down into his roots as he sank lower in the bath, letting the hot water loosen his muscles.

“A tip for you, Wolfgang. Expect everyone around you to fuck something up sooner or later. That’s all I’ve seen for years.”

Wolfgang only nodded, and Valerius noticed out of the corner of his eye that the lad seemed incredibly interested in his helmet, the way he stared at it.

Smirking, he leaned back and rinsed his hair. The guard was embarrassed, how cute. 

He worked the conditioner into a lather, again making sure it reached the roots through his thick hair. Taking a deep breath, he decided that as long as the guard was here as he ordered, he would utilize his time.

“This is only Volta’s  _ latest _ screw up. If only that woman showed some restraint for once, neither of us would be here. Then again, I’ve never known her to act like anything but a starved animal around any kind of food at all. Not to mention how she never seems to correctly do anything I ask of her, no matter how  _ simple  _ a task I set. Then there’s the servant, who also should have noticed by now how that woman acts, should have been better prepared for it all,” he huffed, once again leaning back into the water and rinsing the foam out of his hair.

“All of the other courtiers have their faults as well. Vulgora and their endless warmongering, always trying to start fights when they aren’t regaling us with a story about their favorite battles and kills. They never seem sated no matter how much blood they see, how many battles they fight, how many lives they take. Just always looking for the next challenge to show up.”

He sighed heavily, sinking to his chin in the water before asking, “Surely you noticed some of that during the meal, no?”

“I had noticed that they are an… eccentric bunch, to be sure. Difficult to work with.”

“Precisely! Nigh impossible to wrangle!” Valerius shot up, turning and resting his arms on the edge of the bath as he looked at Wolfgang.

“Vlastomil- I don’t know  _ how  _ he got involved at all! He only seems to care about those nasty worms of his- naming them all and constantly wanting to show them off like prize-winning show hounds or something of the like. No, somehow  _ worse-  _ he treats them like his children!” he exhales roughly, disgusted at the thought.

“That is… quite an odd hobby,” Wolfgang admitted, hesitant to speak as he looked up.

“Odd is one way of putting it,” Valerius snorted. “And speaking of odd-  _ Valdemar-  _ now  _ that one  _ is a freak and a half if I’ve ever seen one- and I assure you I’ve seen many. Always speaks so dreamily of  _ dissection  _ this and  _ guts  _ that and wistfully dreaming of another plague to fuel their desire to see as many insides as humanly possible. I don’t know how these people all managed to land themselves with me, and I wish they never had!”

“That is… quite a lot to deal with, Consul. I can see why you’re always so stressed.”

“Stressed indeed! I hardly ever get time to myself you know!” he exclaimed, eagerly meeting Wolfgang’s eyes. “So when I do, it’s nice to air out some of my grievances.”

“I can imagine so, sir. It can be difficult to have to bottle everything up until an opportune moment to release it,” he responded, a little nervous to be meeting the Consul’s gaze, but feeling like he’d be failing a test if he looked away first.

“You get it, lad! It is  _ such  _ a trial keeping myself together in front of people who can hardly do anything correctly! Half the time I feel like I’d yell more than Vulgora if I didn’t bother to try to be the mature one around here,” he exhaled roughly, turning his back to Wolfgang once more as he reached for a sponge. “It’s horribly taxing to be the only  _ real _ adult in a room of adult-sized children.”

Wolfgang, still embarrassed to be in the room at all, suddenly found it hard to want to look away from the Consul as the sponge left trails of lather in its’ wake. Once the Consul stood up to do his legs, however, Wolfgang turned scarlet and looked anywhere but near the water.

“Good luck working here, Wolfgang. With any luck at all you won’t have to be witness to nearly so many screw ups as I am. Then again, if you stick with me, you may witness more than you ever thought possible, but you could learn a valuable trick or two about how to handle the cleanup of other’s mistakes.”

Valerius ducked back down into the water to rinse off a final time before getting out and finding his towel. Wolfgang swallowed hard as he, once again, tried to meld into the door to avoid seeing more than he should.

“Check outside, grab my clothes if the servants actually did the job right,” he ordered, walking behind the changing screen again as he dried off.

Placing his helmet on a stool, Wolfgang gladly opened the door and saw the old clothes gone, fresh robes waiting in their place.

Sheepishly, he brought the clothes to the edge of the screen and held them out before speaking, “Here you are Consul, fresh clothes.”

“Thank you dear,” Valerius said, leaning out and grabbing them.

Wolfgang, redder than ever, simply walked back to the door, and grabbed his helmet again, turning it in his hands.

A few minutes later, a very fresh-looking Valerius stepped out, clothes neat and hair brushed as he worked it back into a braid.

“I think that tonight has been plenty of excitement. I am going to retire back to my chambers, have some wine, and just relax for the evening.”

“A good plan, sir,” Wolfgang said, clearing his throat as he put his helmet back on and led the Consul back to his room.

The walk was quiet, but Valerius found it easy to be around this guard. He'd have to keep him close for more complaints, he decided as they reached his door.

Stepping inside, he turned back to Wolfgang and spoke, “You are quite a good listener after all, Wolfgang. I will have to utilize that skill of yours more often.”

“Thank you, Consul Valerius, I would be happy to be of service,” he said, surprised.

Looking him up and down one last time, Valerius smiled and said, “I believe you’ll be of service in more ways than one, in due time. Good night Wolfgang.”

The door closed in front of him before he could say anything else, so all Wolfgang could do was blink and feel another blush creep its’ way along his face.

Working in the castle was proving itself to be quite the adventure.


End file.
